EL SEGUNDO – September will come and go without Andrew Bynum on the practice court.

So will October and perhaps most of November, too.

Bynum revealed Saturday the target date for his return from offseason knee surgery will be late November, which means he’ll miss all of training camp, plus eight exhibitions, plus a to-be-determined number of regular-season games.

New York-based surgeon David Altchek examined Bynum on Thursday, telling the Lakers’ 7-foot center that he faces four more weeks of inactivity before he can be cleared to resume full-contact practices with his teammates.

“Once it’s all over, I’ll be ready to go come the end of November,” Bynum said at the Lakers’ annual media day. “I’m hoping (to play) by the end of November. The doctor is telling me somewhere around there, but there is no exact date.”

The two-time defending NBA champion Lakers declined to set a timetable for Bynum to make his season debut, but you can scratch him from their regular-season opener Oct. 26 against the Houston Rockets at Staples Center.

“Initially, going into it, it was supposed to take six to eight weeks (to recover), but the doctor actually told me before the surgery if he saw anything else wrong he would go ahead and fix it, which he did,” Bynum said.

In fact, instead of simply removing the damaged meniscus in Bynum’s right knee, Altchek performed a more complex procedure to reattach it. The surgery requires a longer recovery period, which was compounded by Bynum’s decision to delay it.

Bynum was originally scheduled to have the operation July 18, but he moved it back 10 days so he could attend soccer’s World Cup in South Africa. He went on vacation with Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s blessing.

Others have questioned the delay in having surgery, however.

“I had the operation when I was ready,” Bynum explained. “Obviously, (the criticism) is because I could have had the surgery the next day (after the end of the season. But you kind of have to be ready to go into surgery. I don’t think that’s the thing you want to do coming off a long season and coming off a championship.

“I kind of took my time with it and I’m fine with it.”

Shortest. Summer. Ever.

Kobe Bryant also underwent surgery on his right knee during the offseason, but he said he was ready to participate in the first practice Saturday. He also said his broken right index finger was improved and he was shooting without a brace.

“I had my knee taken care of and it feels strong,” he said. “It’s kind of surreal that we’re back here already. It seems like just yesterday we had the parade, but here we are. It’s a testament to how time flies and you have to cherish every moment.”

The Lakers defeated the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the Finals on June 17. They got the jump on most of the rest of league’s teams, starting training camp a few days early because they are traveling to Europe later this week for a pair of exhibition games.

Summer whirlwind

Pau Gasol visited South Africa, India, Turkey, Ethiopia, Greece and his native Spain before arriving back in Southern California two days before the start of camp.

“I spent more time in airplanes than in my car this summer,” he said, smiling. “I have a lot of frequent flier miles now.”

Gasol said he arrived in South Africa only hours before watching Spain defeat the Netherlands in the World Cup final and then departed 24 hours later.

Numbers game

Ron Artest swapped jersey numbers, exchanging the No. 37 he wore in his first season with the Lakers in favor of the No. 15 he wore when he first entered the league with the Chicago Bulls and later the Indiana Pacers.

Elliott Teaford is an award-winning hockey reporter based in Southern California who covered the L.A. Kings when they won the Stanley Cup in 2012 and in '14, and the Anaheim Ducks' Cup win in 2007. He grew up playing outdoors on the streets of Philadelphia. He also watched the Flyers bully their way to consecutive Stanley Cups in the 1970s, and makes no excuses for their quasi-legal play.

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